Australian singer-songwriter Mojo Juju: ‘We are well within our rights to be angry and emotional.’
Photograph: Claudia Sangiorgi Dalimore

In the simple, powerful clip for Mojo Juju’s latest single, the singer stares down the camera, self-assured, fierce. Her presence is somewhat at odds with the words she utters: “I don’t know where I belong.”

It’s a strange thing to be forced to ponder in one’s home country. Native Tongue, the title track from the Melbourne soul/blues singer’s upcoming album, is “a song about longing”; a lament of being caught between cultural worlds and not quite feeling at home anywhere.

Having both Aboriginal (Wiradjuri) and Filipino heritage, Mojo “Juju” Ruiz de Luzuriaga was born in Australia but says she has always been told that she is “the other”. “I was always told that I looked different. That was the main narrative that was sold when I was growing up in Australia, and I feel like it still is that way to a degree,” she says.

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It was felt as recently as July, when The Music critic Ross Clelland described her sound as being “somehow very Australian” despite having “mongrel heritage”.

As Juju noted in a Facebook post, the use of the derogatory word – even in the context of a favourable review – showed “a lack of sensitivity”, and the framing of it “implies that having mixed heritage makes a person less or not at all Australian”. (Clelland was dismissed from the publication following the review; he has apologised for using the word “clumsily and ignorantly”.)

The flare-up was just the latest symptom of an industry that requires musicians fit into a neat genre, place or sound. But rather than shapeshift to tick boxes, Mojo Juju takes her gloves off. On her third studio album, she delves into her family history to excavate her roots for answers.

“There is a lot of conversation about identity politics happening around the world, and what I’ve found is that so much of the conversation was really coming from a place of academia. People are just throwing around big words and I feel like a lot of the humanity is being lost in the telling of those stories,” Juju says.

“I wanted to do something that addressed it from my own perspective, but approached it in a way that was very personal – because I don’t think that you can remove the personal from the political or vice versa.”

When you are a person of colour you have to be even better at what you do

Mojo Juju

On Native Tongue, we journey with the artist as she explores her Indigenous heritage, her father’s experience as a Filipino immigrant, and the love story between her great-grandparents. She also talks about racism and the ironic sense of disconnect that social media has brought with it. She brings us inside her own personal battles – including the painful deliberation of whether to continue in the music industry after a decade of leaving her heart and soul on the stage.

“The feedback I was getting was that I didn’t look right, sound right or act right. I was too queer or too brown or just not attractive enough to sell records,” she says.

“I don’t have the same energy as I used to have 10 years ago and I’ve changed, and the industry has changed. Performing this new material feels like its reignited my passion and purpose for music.”

Juju still sometimes feels as though her place on a lineup or playlist is simply to fill a quota for female artists; other times, she’s not placed at all. There’s still a way to go before it becomes natural to have lineups that are truly representative and an industry where diverse artists feel valued, she says. “It’s great that there is a conscious movement within the music industry towards diversifying, but I also think it has to go that next step further so it isn’t tokenising.

“There is so much talent! And I think for too long a lot of that talent has been overlooked or misplaced within the industry. For example, with someone like Ngaiire or Thelma Plum, who I know have spoken out in the media before about being put on the world music stage at festivals – these are not world music artists. These are pop artists who are making pop that 100% stands up against all of the other pop out there, and is often better because when you are a person of colour you have to be even better at what you do to get the same level of recognition.”

Support from community radio has been pivotal to her success, Juju says – but it hasn’t extended to the national youth broadcaster, whose choices for airplay can have a huge impact on the sound of Australian music.

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“I think it’s a shame that Triple J has for such a long time had such a major influence on the popularity of artists in this country,” she says. “I don’t begrudge them the right to program however they feel; the shame in it, I think, is that ... so many artists in this country have felt they needed to tailor the music that they were making in order to get that kind of radio play, that coveted spot.”

In simple terms, as she asserts in Native Tongue: “The time for being nice is through, let’s call it what it is.” But in an industry notorious for being a “boys’ club”, she says, those who speak up against prejudice aren’t always welcome.

“Women in the industry or people of colour have to be so measured in how [we] approach things because people so often dismiss us as angry, or emotional – and I think we are well within our rights to be angry and emotional,” Juju says with a wry laugh.

“I think certain people have had the floor for such a long time and when they are challenged they don’t know how to accept that graciously, and the immediate default is to go into conflict or become defensive, and nothing gets achieved. I think what needs to happen is open discourse, and a willingness to learn and to do better. Everyone can do better. I know I can do better,” she says.

“You’ve got to be prepared to step aside. You don’t have to insert yourself into every story. You can listen to something and hear it objectively without needing to defend yourself.”